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Outfits, Scripts, Bakes on Mesh: How do people handle appliers, layers, etc?


Qie Niangao
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I'm a scripter, and no kind of expert on SL fashion -- it's all I can do to dress myself -- so this may be a problem that doesn't exist.

When I change outfits, I can make auto-alpha (usually) do what I want to hide and show body parts corresponding to the change, but I don't know any way to make my mesh body add/remove layers and applied textures accordingly.

So, AFAIK, either I have to do all that manually, or I need to keep whole separate avatar copies in Inventory. (yuck! wasn't the whole point of auto-alpha to rid ourselves of that gruesome indignity?)

And with Bakes on Mesh coming Real Soon Now, this problem seems to be about to get much worse unless something is done to contain the madness.

Now, if there were a standard, accepted open script interface to all mesh avatars (alphas, layers, applied textures), one could include a relatively simple outfit-specific scripted object in each inventoried outfit to record and playback all those changes, much the way we can do with user-custom auto-alpha now. Or, failing that, mesh avatar makers could replicate the hideous kludge they each adopted separately for auto-alpha, again applying their unique proprietary super-secret stupidity to layers and applied textures, which while sucky would at least be an improvement over a separate avatar copy per outfit.

But... if Bakes on Mesh doesn't even include a script interface (initially? ever??), the whole feature seems completely doomed, at least to me.

Or... is there some trick I'm missing?

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4 minutes ago, Candice LittleBoots said:

I'm a bit gutted about all the old layered stuff I trashed thinking I'd never need it again after advancing to a mesh body ?

A tragedy ?

Maybe not a big tragedy after all. Those old things had texture size of 512 x 512 pixels. BoM will accept texture size of 1024 x 1024 pixels.
There is a big difference how much better and clearer the bigger textures will look compared to the old smaller ones.

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2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'm a scripter, and no kind of expert on SL fashion -- it's all I can do to dress myself -- so this may be a problem that doesn't exist.

When I change outfits, I can make auto-alpha (usually) do what I want to hide and show body parts corresponding to the change, but I don't know any way to make my mesh body add/remove layers and applied textures accordingly.

So, AFAIK, either I have to do all that manually, or I need to keep whole separate avatar copies in Inventory. (yuck! wasn't the whole point of auto-alpha to rid ourselves of that gruesome indignity?)

And with Bakes on Mesh coming Real Soon Now, this problem seems to be about to get much worse unless something is done to contain the madness.

Now, if there were a standard, accepted open script interface to all mesh avatars (alphas, layers, applied textures), one could include a relatively simple outfit-specific scripted object in each inventoried outfit to record and playback all those changes, much the way we can do with user-custom auto-alpha now. Or, failing that, mesh avatar makers could replicate the hideous kludge they each adopted separately for auto-alpha, again applying their unique proprietary super-secret stupidity to layers and applied textures, which while sucky would at least be an improvement over a separate avatar copy per outfit.

But... if Bakes on Mesh doesn't even include a script interface (initially? ever??), the whole feature seems completely doomed, at least to me.

Or... is there some trick I'm missing?

A single avatar mesh that has the Bakes-on-Mesh "magic textures" will automatically inherit all the skin/layer textures from any outfit it's worn with - it's an exact in loco corporalis substitute for the default body.

23 minutes ago, Coby Foden said:

Maybe not a big tragedy after all. Those old things had texture size of 512 x 512 pixels. BoM will accept texture size of 1024 x 1024 pixels.
There is a big difference how much better and clearer the bigger textures will look compared to the old smaller ones.

Not necessarily - that depends on the item. There are a fair number of skins and clothing items that had their textures uploaded at 1024 x 1024 even thought they would only display at 512 x 512 on the default avatar. This is an old Garden of Ku system tattoo on the default avatar as it looks now on the Beta grid with 1024 x 1024 baking:

KuTattoo.thumb.png.21955817f6892748f04827c1203cbaa0.png

 

 

 

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55 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

A single avatar mesh that has the Bakes-on-Mesh "magic textures" will automatically inherit all the skin/layer textures from any outfit it's worn with - it's an exact in loco corporalis substitute for the default body.

Oh that's better than I'd thought... but I'm still struggling with the details... will it paint the textures on those layers and activate all and only those layers that were active when the outfit was saved? If it does all that, does it also preserve alpha, (mostly*) obviating the auto-alpha scripts? (I still really, really, really want to control all this interactively with scripts, too, but maybe that will come eventually.)

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Not necessarily - that depends on the item. There are a fair number of skins and clothing items that had their textures uploaded at 1024 x 1024 even thought they would only display at 512 x 512 on the default avatar. This is an old Garden of Ku system tattoo on the default avatar as it looks now on the Beta grid with 1024 x 1024 baking:

Oh, that's even more interesting. So the inventory item (tattoo, say) preserved the texture as-is, only downscaling it when actually baked onto the avatar. That seems an odd engineering decision, but sure looks smart now!

I'm regretting not paying much attention to BoM development before. Sorry for the remedial lessons; probably I should read the spec, huh?

_____________
*I say "mostly" because it's still desirable to be able to add and remove individual items and have the avatar automatically apply the item-specific alpha cuts. That would also be useful for dynamically baking individual worn layers/textured clothing, which is one reason I keep wanting everything to be under unified script control.

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1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

Oh that's better than I'd thought... but I'm still struggling with the details... will it paint the textures on those layers and activate all and only those layers that were active when the outfit was saved? If it does all that, does it also preserve alpha, (mostly*) obviating the auto-alpha scripts? (I still really, really, really want to control all this interactively with scripts, too, but maybe that will come eventually.)

 

Bear in mind that by "layers" I mean system layers - they all get baked down to one texture. Right now there isn't a good way to send some textures to onion layers and others to the main avatar. (Although they did accept a theoretical JIRA I made about being able to create clothing-only or skin-only bakes, it won't be a day-0 feature if at all.)

It will work with alphas if the mesh body is set to alpha masking with a non-0 cutoff (which the current bodies aren't.) There is an interesting side effect - there will be a limited ability to adjust the coverage of an alpha file if the textures used in it are a gradient instead of all-or-nothing. It would only be by mesh face and could be done by adjusting the masking cutoff value.

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5 hours ago, Candice LittleBoots said:

I'm a bit gutted about all the old layered stuff I trashed thinking I'd never need it again after advancing to a mesh body ?

A tragedy ?

 

Massive understatement. The word "tragedy" doesn't quite cover it, either.

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When I first changed to the mesh body, I started going through my older clothing stuff and just flat out deleted items with system layers in them.  Since I still have tons of older clothes in inventory that I'm still going through, once I heard about BOM, I modified my clean-out method.  Now, I switch back to my old system avi and try on every one of those system layers. I then decide if I like the top/pant/whatever well enough that I **might** wear it via BOM.  If I think that I might, then I am tossing it into a 'Save for BOM' folder.  Granted, so far I'm not really finding a lot that I'd still like to wear, but the folder is getting stuff.  Once BOM actually gets here, then I'll have to re-check each of those items and decide how they look at that time.

I did however trash probably around 50,000 items before I heard about BOM though - literally just looking in a folder and trashing it if there were any system layers at all.  :( 

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13 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

The trick I use is simple and I'm surprised not more people do it that way: Every time I make a new outfit, I use s fresh copy of my mesh body.

I used to do that too -- that's the "gruesome indignity" I mentioned -- but it's a fantastic pain made worse by the fact all the mesh bodies I use are no-mod, so I can't even rename them, and hence there's a whole sleight of hand that I had to do with named subfolders for those copies to keep from having to chase down every linked instance, lest I delete an original in use for an outfit.

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40 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

The trick I use is simple and I'm surprised not more people do it that way: Every time I make a new outfit, I use s fresh copy of my mesh body.

What do you do when there is an update for the mesh body? Let's suppose you have 200 outfits and every outfit has a copy of the body.

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1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

The trick I use is simple and I'm surprised not more people do it that way: Every time I make a new outfit, I use s fresh copy of my mesh body.

I now do this for any outfit that is using any sort of applier and/or any alpha cuts.  I use to just add the applier HUD to the outfit, but then it still had to be 'applied' and possibly other stuff removed.  I also used to create an auto-hide prim to any outfit needing alpha cuts, but swapping between outfits that have auto-hide stuff in them didn't always unhide/hide the proper things.  That prompted me to just make copies of the bodies.  And yes, I find that all frustrating since that totally defeats the purpose of Outfits with Links.

 

22 minutes ago, Coby Foden said:

What do you do when there is an update for the mesh body? Let's suppose you have 200 outfits and every outfit has a copy of the body.

I've not had to deal with a Maitreya body update yet.  However, I have very few Outfits that I keep long term -- usually only special photo stuff or some holiday stuff or special outfit for a particular location.  Mainly this is because I have so much clothing in my inventory, that I can't see a reason to wear something twice (the primary clothing items -- not the underwear, shoes, jewelry, tats, or hair).  Thus I usually only have a single 'current' outfit that I keep updated to whatever I'm currently wearing.  When I change outfits every day or so, the majority of the time, the clothing portion of that outfit gets trashed - unless it is something special that I want to keep. Overall, that means I have very few folders that contain an actual copy of the Maitreya body.

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28 minutes ago, Coby Foden said:

What do you do when there is an update for the mesh body? Let's suppose you have 200 outfits and every outfit has a copy of the body.

That's an excuse for making lovely brand new outfits ^_^

 

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I am a moderator in the Maitreya Lara Friends group on my main. I remember the screams of horror coming from those who make copies of the body to save an outfit during the last update. It was a rude awakening when they realized they'd have to loose all their outfits or painstakingly save each layer to the new hud and transfer it over to the new body. I can't think of worse torture. Thankfully I don't save many outfits. If I do need to save one, I find that saving the applier with a notecard about color choices in the folder is much easier to swap out the new body when an update comes around.

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On 8/28/2018 at 12:49 PM, ChinRey said:

The trick I use is simple and I'm surprised not more people do it that way: Every time I make a new outfit, I use s fresh copy of my mesh body.

Oh it's a trick many have thought about.....and many of us decide NOT to do it that way :P  

Personally I don't wear very many applier based things.  The odd tattoo and/or lingerie.  When I do, I just wear and save the applier HUD with outfit I am saving.

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1 hour ago, Tarani Tempest said:

Personally I don't wear very many applier based things.  The odd tattoo and/or lingerie.

Back in the old days, my skirts had those "oh-so-wonderful" (rolls eyes) glitch pants.  Now days it is either mesh panties or applier ones.  99% of the time, the mesh panties want to poke through some part of my skirt/dress, thus I now have a huge collection of applier panties.  *sigh*

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2 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Back in the old days, my skirts had those "oh-so-wonderful" (rolls eyes) glitch pants.  Now days it is either mesh panties or applier ones.  99% of the time, the mesh panties want to poke through some part of my skirt/dress, thus I now have a huge collection of applier panties.  *sigh*

Ahhh yes, I definitely understand the panty situation with mesh bodies.  I switch between a few applier panties I like, if I need to.  I have a mesh panty set from insanya that fits under a whole lot of mesh clothing though, not everything...but a lot of it :) 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/3/2018 at 2:43 PM, Kassina Wylie said:

I'd really like to see the ability to save your outfits with your color options. Sometimes I wear the same heels and jeans but I change their colors using their respective HUDs. It would be great to not have to change the item color every time you change your outfit. 

If the item is copiable, have you tried wearing a copy and changing it's colour with the hud. I'm sure the hud will only change what you are wearing and not whats in your inv at the time.

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17 minutes ago, Topo Nightfire said:

If the item is copiable, have you tried wearing a copy and changing it's colour with the hud. I'm sure the hud will only change what you are wearing and not whats in your inv at the time.

That's exactly what I do. If a pair of jeans has a HUD with 10 colour options, you can make up to another 9 copies of the jeans, wear each copy in turn and change its colour via the HUD. You then have a collection of jeans of different colours, and the HUD becomes redundant.

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